Saturday, January 12, 2008

Bill Clinton is Boss Tweed: Recount the Votes in New Hampshire

for The Free Market News Network on 1/12/08

Kid, to run a crew like that you have to be completely rotten, Ben Wade, 3:10 to Yuma

Although it is obvious that the machine-counted votes in the heavily-populated industrial regions of the state will yield results different than those of more independent-minded voters here in northern NH where they are counted by hand, Dennis Kucinich’s call for a recount in New Hampshire should nevertheless be heeded.

We are seeing the same corrupt practices growing again today in the Democratic Party here in the Northeast that we saw in Boston in the '30s and '40s and in New York's ethnic neighborhoods during the Tammany Hall scandal. And we are seeing the same machine politicians.

Hollywood producer David Geffen has suggested that the Clintons are some of the most corrupt politicians ever to enter American politics.

“Everybody in politics lies, but they [the Clintons] do it with such ease, it’s troubling,” he told Maureen Dowd of the NYTs.

Geffen clearly states what most Democrats have conveniently repressed: The Clintons are crooks. Possibly the worst in the modern history of the Democratic Party. In an interview with Dowd, Geffen cited a pardon granted to Marc Rich after he gave Bill Clinton a million dollars as a sampling of Clinton corruption which would even impress Boss Tweed.

Senator Clinton’s ride has been appalling from beginning to end; from her questionable winnings in real estate in Arkansas to her endorsement of China’s “reaching out” to religious groups in a trip to China as First Lady while China was literally sweeping Taoists off the streets by the thousands never to be seen again and imprisoning and executing Tibetans by the tens of thousands. Her Senate ride has been entirely scripted and her record on Iraq is indefensible.

The Democrats have been crippled by Clinton Personality Cult. Whether it is Bill tapping the undergraduates in the Oval Office or his undergraduate staff pulling the keys off the computers or Hillary stealing White House trinkets and historical artifacts on the way out the door as First Lady, for almost two decades now the Clintons have constantly put the Democrats in the position of defending the indefensible.

Now may be the time to review. When Bill left office in 2001, The New York Times asked prominent Democrats their opinions:

Robert B. Reich, Clinton’s Secretary of Labor, said: “The seemingly interminable Clinton scandals are not the Democrats biggest problem, and merely distancing themselves from Bill Clinton (and Hillary Rodman Clinton) won’t restore the party’s soul. The Democratic establishment in Washington is no longer connected to the grass roots. The national party is nothing but a fund-raising machine.”

Author Kevin Phillips said: “Ralph Nader was right about the Democratic Party losing its soul to big donors and corporate money.”

Warren Beatty, actor and political activist said: “The Democratic Party has abdicated much of its soul to raise the money necessary to be elected . . . the party must, above all, face the fact of its own culpability in the odor of the legalized bribery that constitutes the way we finance our campaigns.”

Bill’s disgraceful slander and character assassination of Barack Obama just prior to the New Hampshire primary last week, his New Hampshire and national operatives race-baiting and insinuating drug issues and Islamic sympathies, and Senator Clinton’s sleazy new site “Hillary is 44,” virtually a Swift Boat operation set up specifically to attack Obama, bring a new sense of élan to an old political game played best perhaps in my old neighborhood, South Boston.

Bill Clinton is Boss Tweed but his loyal following is not this time a recent immigrant group fighting for turf and survival, but his own dedicated personality cult of people his own age, which George Will correctly identifies with geezer musicians like Led Zeppelin pitifully trying to stage a comeback.

Roll up a jumbo, Bill. But don’t inhale.

It is always Personality Cult which sends the electorate to a wife, daughter or secondary family member. It won't hold. Like Peter the Great's Catherine, John’s Yoko, Mao's Madame Mao and Bill's Hillary, the afterglow gives a sense of loss in an age rapidly deteriorating to all but the adoring idolaters. The Shining House on the Hill is in hindsight and the age has descended into shadow.

2 comments:

In the late 1990's I never quite understood one half of the country's contempt for the Clintons. now I get it. He is perhaps the most able politician of our lifetime, and he is corrupt. He is really a split individual, half light and half dark. This couple now poses a Rorschact to the country. It is a 50/50 call for many people. The third term is wrong. I trust the country will reject the Clintons in 2008.

Profile

Bernie Quigley is a prize-winning magazine writer and has worked more than 30 years as a book and magazine editor, political commentator and book, movie, music and art reviewer. His essays on politics and world affairs have appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia Daily News and other newspapers and magazines. He has published poetry in Painted Bride Quarterly and has written dozens of magazine articles. For 20 years he has been an amateur farmer, raising Tunis sheep and organic vegetables. He has written hundreds of columns for "Pundits Blog" in "The Hill" a political journal in Washington, D.C. He lives in the White Mountains with his wife and four children.